


Saving Tomorrow

by ObsidianJade



Series: Hallowed [1]
Category: Cars (Movies), Planes (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M, Maru being awesome, TW: Survivor Guilt, TW: suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 09:04:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3441392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianJade/pseuds/ObsidianJade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘His best friend was gone, and Blade... he thought his life was over too.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saving Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The Cars/Planes Universe and all characters and settings contained are owned by Disney/Pixar. I make no claims to ownership and no profit from this work.
> 
> A/N: I have no idea what it is about the Cars/Planes 'verse that has me killing characters and/or driving them to near suicide. Especially when I happen to genuinely like the characters in question.

The building and the asphalt below still bore evidence of this morning’s crash. Glass shattered, concrete charred, an oily slick of spilled fluid and spent fire-foam gleaming on the tarmac.

Glancing up to the top of the building, Maru could see the silhouette of a helicopter against the darkening sky.

All of the crew’s choppers had been grounded following this morning’s crash. None of them would have been stupid enough to ignore the order, so there was only one chopper that would be brooding up on top of a building right now. Particularly _that_ building.

As if there had ever been any question.

Sighing, Maru shoved the building’s doors open and headed for the ramps. Twenty-five stories, and of course the damn elevators were shut down because of the damage. He had a long climb ahead of him.

Damn Blade, anyway.

_________________________________________________

The view from up here was amazing, Blade reflected, with the same blank numbness that had been tearing him apart since that morning. The building was just tall enough to give a clear look at the horizon, and the perpetual smog did make for some amazingly colorful sunsets.

He and Nick had watched sunsets from this very roof for years now. They spent their dinner breaks up here, season after season, taking advantage of the solitude the roof offered. An hour a day spent alone together wasn’t much, but it was often all they could get.

Had gotten.

Blade spun his rotors a few times, not enough to lift off, but enough to contemplate it. Just enough to get over the roof’s safety wall, and then he could stall his engines out in midair. A twenty-five story fall would be perfectly effective. Suspicious, certainly, but they would never be able to prove it wasn’t an accident. 

It’s not like they’d be able to ask him, after all.

He spun his rotors a little faster, enough to start kicking dust out from the roof gravel, and wondered how much dying would hurt.

Certainly it would be nothing like the pain he felt now, screaming and tearing at him from behind that fragile, fast-fading numbness. 

Nick was dead. And he hadn’t been able to save him.

He didn’t deserve to survive when Nick hadn’t. 

And more to the point, he didn’t want to. 

He kicked the speed of his rotors up enough that the dust billowed away like smoke, and fought down a surge of nausea at the memory of fire. The scent of burning metal would haunt him for the rest of his life, no matter how long or short that might be.

“Blade!”

He increased the speed of his rotors a little more, feeling the weight on his landing gear lessen, the joints easing up as the air welcomed him back. 

“Blade, Ford damn you, don’t you slagging dare!”

The roof-access door slammed against the wall, finally forced open against the pressure of his rotor wash, and spilled an infuriated forklift out onto the roof gravel.

“Blade, you slagging son of a blender, you set down right this instant!”

It was Maru, their set medic, Blade realized, watching the little forklift trying to shield his eyes against the stinging dust, even as he kept yelling. 

“I’ll dismantle you and reassemble you as a garage door, Blade, you see if I don’t!”

“Sorry, Maru,” he answered, just loud enough to be heard over the noise of his rotors. “I can’t do that.”

“Oh, sure, my mistake! Of course you can’t. One thing went wrong for you, so it’s perfectly reasonable to throw yourself off the side of a slagging building!”

One thing? _One thing?!_ The shock and indignity of it was enough to stall Blade’s engine out all by itself, his rotors slowing and finally stopping with a dull whine. 

“You think I lost _one thing_?” he demanded, aghast, as Maru made his way across the roof to Blade’s side at a speed entirely at odds with his usually laid-back disposition.

“Well, unless Nick had a sister...”

“I lost my filming partner, my best friend, and my lover,” Blade snarled, barely holding back the urge to slap the forklift on top of his smug little roof. “And I suppose I’ve lost my television show, too, although why anyone would think that matters in the face of losing Nick, I can’t begin to imagine!”

“So, you lost a job and one person,” Maru shot back, forks folded in front of him and expression sour. “If that’s the worst thing you ever live through, you’re a lucky guy.”

“ _Lucky?!_ ” Blade exploded, hearing his own voice bounce and echo back at him from the soot-darkened windows of the buildings around them. “I’ve just lost every reason I had for living!”

“So you’re just gonna give up, is that it?” Maru shot back. “Drop yourself off a roof and leave everyone else to clean up your mess? Don’t you even think about it, Blazin’ Blade. Because if you do that, all you’re going to do is throw Nick into shadow.”

Blade opened his mouth to argue, but Maru barreled on.

“Gotta get top billing, huh, Mister Big Shot? People will say, ‘Oh, Nick died, but Blade had to do him one better’!”

“Now you wait just -”

“And then what’ll it mean, after they’ve scraped you off the road? That you were a coward, that’s what. A blind coward, at that. Couldn’t see well enough to see the stupid little forklift trying to help you, or maybe you knocked him off the building with you instead -”

“I would never -”

“No, you’d just kill yourself, right?” Maru snapped back, his tone scathing. “Here’s a thought, genius; would Nick be happy that you’re planning to go smash? Would he want you to follow him down like your hoist was stuck in his tail again?”

Blade felt the anger run out of him as Maru’s words sank in. Nick had loved life, met every moment of it with a hungry exuberance that Blade had envied so much. 

“Or,” Maru continued inexorably, "would he want you to do something? Something to make the world better?” 

Sighing, Blade locked his rotors, and slowly, painfully, turned himself away from the edge of the roof. “The world’s not going to get better, Maru,” he answered quietly. “Not for me. Not without Nick in it.”

“Maybe not,” Maru conceded, rolling forward to touch a gentle fork to Blade’s side. “But maybe you can make sure someone else’s life stays good. Maybe you can learn to be what you’ve pretended all along; someone who saves lives.”

“Too little, too late,” Blade whispered, the anger gone from him and his strength gone with it. “I couldn’t save the life that mattered today.”

“Maybe not. But if you give up today, think of all the lives you won’t save tomorrow.”

“I can save all the lives in the world tomorrow, Maru. It won’t change today.”

“Nothing will,” Maru answered, with a philosophical shrug and a pat to Blade’s side. “But tomorrow is still there, and the only way to go now is up.”

“The ground isn’t going anywhere, Maru.”

The pat became a smack, hard enough that Blade was fairly certain he now had a dent in front of his hoist hatch. “Ow! Dammit, Maru!”

“You’re a helicopter, bolts-for-brains! The ground isn’t yours. The sky is.”

The words were Nick’s, repeated a thousand times over in a dozen variations. Nick, who had loved flying, loved being in the air, and probably would never have touched the ground if he'd had the choice. _‘The sky’s ours, Blazin’ Blade, let’s go play in it!’ ‘What’re you doin’ on the ground when we’ve got the whole sky just for us, Blaze?’_

_‘Come on, Blade. Let’s touch the sky.’_

Sighing, Blade closed his eyes and focused on the feeling of Maru’s fork against his side. It had been the ground that took Nick away from him, that ground that Nick had always been leaving behind. And now it was a little forklift who would never know the sky that was keeping the ground from taking him, too. Maru would never come close to filling the hole that Nick had left, at least he would keep Blade from falling.

“All right, Maru,” Blade answered softly. “You keep the ground. I’ll fly.”


End file.
